


At the Broken Places

by bearfeathers



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, False Memories, Friendship, Gen, Iron Man 3 Compliant, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Mind Manipulation, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s01e11 The Magical Place, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Thoughts, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearfeathers/pseuds/bearfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson hasn't slept in three days. Hasn't <i>wanted</i> to sleep in three days. What he does want to do is to retreat to the privacy of his apartment to attempt to sort through the events of the past few days. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't get what he wants. Surprisingly, not because of who he'd expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Think I Broke Something

**Author's Note:**

> I need a way to deal with being emotionally crippled by this episode, so this happened.

_"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."_

_\- Ernest Hemingway_

 

Not for the first time in his life—or even this week—Phil is dodging sleep. Succumbing to sleep means opening himself up to nightmares, to horrifying glimpses into something that was supposed to have been overwritten. If he’s working, moving, doing, then he can evade that for just a little longer. But the reality of the situation is that he’ll have to sleep sometime; caffeine and willpower only get you so far. That doesn’t mean he isn’t fighting exhaustion tooth and nail regardless.

He knows he should sleep, that he needs to rest. Wearing himself thin is putting his team at risk because if he’s not at his best, then he’s dragging them down. There can’t be any weak links. _He_ can’t be a weak link.

But whenever he closes his eyes…

He shakes his head and fishes his keys from his jacket pocket. God, he hates this apartment. It’s just another reminder of how things have changed, of how he’s changed. After coming back to life, he couldn’t very well take up residence in the place he’d called home for nearly two decades. Not when people like Clint or Natasha have used the place as a safe house of sorts for years. Post-mission crashes, moments of vulnerability, his old apartment had seen it all, which is why it would stand to reason that they might think it odd if it was suddenly lived in again.

Because they’d be watching it. He knows they would.

So Nick had moved him here. And it’s not as though the place isn’t nice—it is, probably even nicer than his previous apartment—but it’s not really his. It doesn’t have the feeling of being lived in. It hasn’t seen the things his old one has. These walls haven’t supported injured agents, or drunken ones, and he knows that if he turns up the corner of the Persian rug in the living room, there won’t be a stain on the hardwood from several years past when Clint had decided to crawl in his window and attempt to bleed out on his floor. There are no pockmarks in the kitchen table from Natasha’s knives, or punctures in the wall from Clint’s arrows. There are no scuffmarks on the coffee table from Jasper’s shoes, no rings from where Nick had refused to use a coaster. There are no sticky notes from Maria on the refrigerator, his phone, the lampshades, the bathroom mirror or his nightstand reminding him of important meetings or to apologize for the lack of milk in his refrigerator or to chastise him for the lack of milk in his refrigerator.

There are only ghosts.

Or so he thinks, anyway. At first when he finds the door to the apartment unlocked, he expects Melinda or Grant, possibly even Skye. They’d all seemed reluctant to allow him to leave their sight and so it wouldn’t surprise him to find anyone of them here now. But that’s not who he finds.

He freezes in the doorway, his hand on the light switch when he sees Tony Stark parked on his sofa like he owns the place. There’s a moment of silence that stretches on far longer than it should as they stare each other down.

“Mr. Stark,” Phil says in greeting, the name feeling foreign on his tongue after having gone so long without being spoken.

“Phil,” Tony answers.

Silence once again. Phil takes the time to close the door behind him—although he has half a mind to step out into the hall, slam it shut and flee back to the Bus—and lock it before facing the man once again.

“Who knows?” he asks.

“Just us.”

Phil’s head jerks up at the unexpected voice. He really must be slipping if he’s unable to detect not only Tony Stark, but Captain America in his own quarters. Unconsciously, he finds himself taking a step backwards until his back is pressed against the door. Steve calmly sits at the opposite end of the sofa from Tony. They both watch him, but there’s none of the anger he’d anticipated; just a look of expectancy from each of them. He shifts his gaze to the kitchen.

“Tea or coffee?”

“Sorry?” Steve asks.

“Tea or coffee,” Phil repeats numbly. “Should I make tea or coffee?”

The two Avengers share a look.

“Tea’s fine,” Tony says, shrugging one shoulder. “Something tells me you’ve probably had more than enough coffee by now.”

Phil nods slowly before turning and walking stiffly into the kitchen. He shrugs off his jacket, folding it over one of the chairs before he retrieves the kettle, fills it with water and sets it on the stove to boil. The mugs are where they always are, but it’s always on his second guess that he finds them. He puts out three of them, finds the sugar, checks that the milk hasn’t expired while he was gone, then waits. He stands and watches the kettle, wondering what to do about the two men on his sofa.

In a way, he almost feels relieved. This is something he’s been expecting since his return to the field. He’s trusted the system, trusted Nick’s decision that anyone below a Level 7 security clearance wouldn’t be authorized to know. But in the back of his mind, he’s wondered. Why? Why couldn’t they know? He’s gone along with it, wondering when they would find out—because they would. Whether it was due to Fury’s allowance or their collective ability to meddle like the best of them, they would find out. He expected anger, especially from Clint and Natasha, not the calm reception he’d just received from Tony and Steve.

And the timing, could it possibly be any worse? He’s having trouble maintaining his grasp on reality, on his sanity, and it would figure they happened to appear just after he’s uncovered some of the memories he was never meant to.

Suddenly, a thought a occurs to him: what if they’re _not_ really here? What if his exhausted, strained mind had simply conjured something he wanted to see? Something he _needed_ to see? What if he’d really snapped? What if this was just his mind desperately grasping at some modicum of comfort after what he’d seen? What if he’s just been talking to an empty apartment, preparing three cups of tea like a complete lunatic? Is he even _in_ his apartment right now? How can he be sure he’s even r—

“Phil.”

He hears his name and realizes he’s been standing here, staring at the kettle while it shrieked for who knows how long. Tony is in the doorway and moves forward to see to it but Phil holds up a hand to stop him. Surprisingly, Tony stops.

“It’s fine. I have it,” Phil assures him, moving the kettle and twisting the knob on the stove.

“You want help or you want me to wait with Steve?” the genius fishes.

“Go wait, I have everything under control,” Phil replies.

Tony gives him a look like he doesn’t really believe that statement, but he doesn’t argue, to Phil’s amazement. The agent can’t help but heave a sigh of relief when the man retreats, leaving him alone in the empty kitchen. It gives him time to gather his thoughts and do his best to compose himself before he faces the two Avengers again.

He places everything on a tray and walks back into the room, clearly interrupting a hurried, hushed conversation between the two men. Setting a mug down before each of them—on coasters—he sits back in the chair opposite, toying with the string of his teabag around the rim of his glass as it steeps. There are several questions hanging in the air, it’s just a matter of who asks which one first.

“When’s the last time you slept, Agent Coulson?” Steve asks, leaning forward in his seat, his elbows resting on his knees.

Not the question he’d been expecting, but somehow not surprising either. He shakes his head.

“Irrelevant,” he answers.

“You were recently abducted and tortured. From your medical file, you were displaying some concussion symptoms. When was the last time you slept, agent?” Steve asks again, his tone firm but not unkind.

Phil sighs and gives in. “Tuesday.”

“It’s Friday, Phil,” Tony points out.

“I had noticed, thank you,” Phil replies. He doesn’t want to be rude, but his patience has worn thin this week and he’d rather not prolong what’s obviously going to be a very stressful conversation. “If there’s something you’d like to say to me, please stop beating around the bush and say it. Whatever you feel you have to get off your chest, I’d prefer to hear it straightforward.”

“Wait, you think we came here because we’re pissed at you?” Tony asks.

That gives Phil pause. He frowns. “Aren’t you?”

“Not at you,” Steve says.

“I don’t understand,” Phil admits. “I assumed you were here because you found out I wasn’t dead, that you’d been lied to and were seeking retribution. Answers. Something.”

“I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty pissed when I first found out you were still alive and off with a cute, new team,” Tony says. “I mean, way to go just piling on top of my abandonment issues.”

“Tony,” Steve says with a long, slow sigh.

“But we’re not here to lay down the law or freak out at you for not letting us know,” Tony clarifies. “Maybe a month ago I would have been interested in something like that, but not now.”

“This… isn’t how I pictured this would go,” Phil says.

“You’re saying you pictured us finding out?” Steve asks.

“It was only a matter of time before one of you found out,” Phil says. “I would have figured at least one of you would have punched me by now.”

“Well, someone kind of already beat us to it,” Tony said, gesturing to the cuts and bruises littering his face. “Looks like they put you through the ringer.”

“So, what, you thought you’d just drop in and see how I was doing?” Phil asks, confused by the whole thing. He’s still on the defensive, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Something like that,” Steve says. His expression darkens. “We know about Tahiti.”

“It’s a m—“

Phil bites on the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. He knows the truth, why can’t he stop himself from saying that? Steve expression softens, his eyebrows drawing up at the crease, pity written clearly in his features. It shouldn’t make Phil angry, but it does, because good god he can’t stand to be pitied.

“Tony’s the one who found out,” Steve tells him, his gaze swiveling to Tony. “Maybe you’d better explain.”

“Right. Yeah. That might be best,” Tony says, bouncing his knee. He looks apprehensive, like he’s second guessing this whole meeting. “You know how, when I’m bored, sometimes I browse through classified S.H.I.E.L.D. material for a laugh?”

“You know how I override your security codes when I want access to your Tower?” Phil returns.

“Used to,” Tony counters.

The comment stings, he can’t deny it. But he lets it. He’s been gone too long, missed too many things; he can’t go on as though nothing’s changed. Truth be told, though, he’s not certain he’s capable of managing anything else at the moment.

“Used to,” Phil agrees quietly.

“Anyway,” Tony mutters, knee bouncing again. “I was looking around and I happened to find some… files. They were write-ups of different missions, all with recent dates, all with your signature. JARVIS verified for me that it really was yours. At first I was… pissed. Beyond pissed. I mean, you were alive. And after all this time, you never tried to contact any of us. Apparently never thought to let us in on the secret, to pop in for a simple ‘Hey, guys, not dead. How’s tricks?’ or anything. Never thought that we might deserve to know or that we might _want_ to know. Not after Pepper cried for days or—“

“That’s enough, Tony,” Steve cuts in. “That’s not why we’re here.”

“No. No, it’s alright,” Phil says peaceably. “He’s right.”

“No, I’m… fuck. You know, I didn’t want to get angry? I don’t want to be angry with you,” Tony says, running a hand through his hair.

“You have every right to be angry,” Phil says calmly. “I understand.”

“Why don’t you just finish explaining,” Steve suggests.

Tony takes a moment to compose himself, shoving away whatever anger he’s feeling in favor of Steve’s suggestion.

“Yeah. Well… I mean, you can imagine that after finding those files, I had to dig deeper. And I did. And I found the videos.”

“Videos,” Phil repeats.

“All of varying length, all with different file names, but all with the word ‘LAZARUS’ in them. So I watched them.”

“And what did you see?” Phil asks, his voice coming out a little more breathless than he’d intended.

“The videos were of you,” Tony answers. “On an operating table. Some kind of… catalogue footage. I watched them and got ahold of Steve because I had no idea what to do about them. So I showed them to him. There was one where….”

Tony pauses. Phil is staring down at his tea, but he’s somehow still aware of the fact that none of them are looking at each other. For his part, he’s not sure he can stand to look them in the eye.

“You just… scream. They’re messing with your brain and you just scream until you can’t anymore and then it’s just this noise. Like you’d scream if you had any voice left to, but you don’t so… you can’t,” Tony says, his voice wavering unsteadily. “In the others, when you’re not screaming, you’re begging them to let you die. Over and over. And it’s pretty fucking clear that you’re in… about as much pain as I’ve seen someone be in without actually dying. Or being allowed to die. You just keep begging and pleading for them to let you die and they don’t listen. They just watch you, just let it keep on happening and you—“

Phil jumps at the sound of something breaking. He and Tony both stare at Steve, the remnants of his mug shattered on the floor. Blood drips steadily from his clenched fist as his chest heaves, his nostrils flared in the very picture of righteous fury. He slowly manages to unclench his fist, exposing the shards of the mug embedded in his palm.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes. “I didn’t mean to let my temper… I’ll clean this up.”

“The mess can wait,” Phil says, rising a bit unsteadily from his seat. “I have a first aid kit in the bathroom, let’s take care of your hand first.”

He hadn’t really expected them both to follow after him, having intended to retrieve the kit and return to the living room, but they’re on his heels the whole way. So he flips the light switch and ushers them inside, directing Steve to sit on the toilet and for Tony to hold a towel beneath the soldier’s hand.

“It’s fine, I can just run it under some water and it’ll heal—“

“It’ll heal quicker if we get the glass out and dress it properly,” Phil says, cutting him off as he drags a stool over and sits on it. “Just because you possess an accelerated healing ability doesn’t mean you don’t feel pain.”

“That might be true, but there are more important things we should be focusing on right now,” Steve says.

“Are there?” Phil asks, beginning to carefully pick the shards out with tweezers.

None of them say anything after that. Phil focuses on Steve’s hand, resting on a towel in his lap. He feels better for something to do that will distract him from the thoughts running rampant in his worn out mind. He’d hoped to have time to deal with the past few days privately once he was out from under the microscopic gaze of his team, but he’d come back to find a different set of people that he’d have to force himself to keep it together for.

“They didn’t tell you, did they?” Tony asks.

Phil pauses, his hand hovering uncertainly before he shakes his head and resumes his work. Steve is still and silent, letting him go on with it.

“They tampered with my memories,” Phil says. “Until a few days ago, I believed I’d spent my recovery in Tahiti.”

He huffs a quick, unamused laugh because of course it seems ridiculous _now_. It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, but it had seemed real. It had seemed so very, very real and now he knows why. Or… mostly.

“That’s what we were afraid of,” Steve says. “Tony only got so far in those files before he had to back out. He made a copy of what he’d seen and called me in and we tried to figure out how to handle this. We monitored S.H.I.E.L.D. airwaves and it came down to Centipede’s capture of you. At that point, we knew we had to approach you.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone else,” Phil clarifies, spreading antibiotic ointment on the cuts after he’s cleaned them.

“We wanted to talk to you first,” Steve says. “To be honest, we both had to give ourselves some time to calm down and think about it rationally. Gut instinct told us to tell everyone and storm Fury’s office, but this isn’t about us. This isn’t about anything we’ve gone through since then. This is about you and what you want to do.”

Phil finishes dressing the soldier’s hand and holds it between both of his own, staring at the fresh bandages. He supposes he should be thankful for small mercies such as the fact that they had decided to keep this knowledge to themselves. Because he’s not sure he can face any of them just now. He can hardly look at the two men in front of him.

He nearly pulls away when Steve turns his hand over, covering both of Phil’s. Nearly, but doesn’t. He should feel comforted, he thinks, that both of them seem to care so deeply, but instead he just feels smothered. Trapped.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Phil says, his voice just above a whisper. “Please.”

“If you don’t want us to tell, then we won’t tell,” Tony assures him.

“I’m not hiding, I just…”

He shakes his head, lets it hang between his hunched shoulders. Lie. That’s a lie.

“I don’t know, actually,” he admits. “I honestly don’t know anymore. This wasn’t supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to see me like this. If I’m being truthful right now, I’m having a hard time deciphering what’s real and what I’ve been lead to believe is real. I trusted the system because I’ve always trusted this system and it hasn’t let me down until now. For the first time since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. I have to question the validity of that decision, because I was… I was supposed to be…”

It’s getting hard to breathe. He’s dimly aware that his hands are shaking as Steve’s grip around them tightens. He was dead for five days. He had begged and pleaded and screamed for them to let him die and they had ignored him. He has never once broken under torture, has never begged for his life. But there is something earth shattering in the realization that he’s never endured torture anywhere near comparable to what he’d suffered at the hands of the very organization he worked for. The organization that he trusted. The _people_ that he trusted.

“Phil? Hey, come on, I need you to breathe for us here, okay?” Tony says.

He feels a hand on his back and then it all goes to hell. He flinches, twists away from the contact, and his head is full of white noise and his screams for death. His struggle against whoever is holding him down is lapping at the very edges of his perception as his panic breaks through the very carefully pieced together façade he’d had in place.

It takes time for him to come down, and when he does he doesn’t even have the energy to muster more than vague feelings of shame at the realization that he’s had a world class meltdown. He’s sitting on the floor, pressed into the corner between the bathtub and the wall, knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped tight around them.

“Okay, okay, no touching the back, I get it,” Tony is saying hurriedly.

“It’s fine,” he manages to gasp. “I shouldn’t have… reacted like that.”

“You need to sleep,” Steve says, laying a gentle, hesitant hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to help you to your bed and you’re going to sleep.”

He feels himself nod slowly, feels hands on his arms, helping him stand on shaky legs before he’s lead out of the bathroom and towards his bedroom. He waves off any further attempts at help, already mortified that he’s allowed himself to fall so far so fast. The feeling of lying down in his own bed has never been more simultaneously gratifying and terrifying to him. Steve has retreated to clean up the mess in the bathroom and the living room, leaving him alone with Tony. He’s not sure if that makes what he has to ask any easier.

“Mr. Stark,” Phil begins tiredly. “I’m sure this will sound like an odd request, but do you think you could stay?”

Tony gives him a long searching look.

“It’s not odd. Believe me, it’s not odd,” he says with a strange sort of insistence to his tone. “And yeah, of course we’ll stay.”

Why wouldn’t he think it’s odd? And then Phil knows. PTSD, The Mandarin, Extremis… Oh, oh, _oh._

“Your arc reactor,” Phil mumbles, scrubbing at his eyes. “You went through with it. I should’ve been there.”

“Not like you had a choice,” Tony says, shrugging one shoulder. He looks away, rubbing the back of his head. “But I kinda wish you had been.”

As much as all of this hurts, as much a strain it puts on him, hearing that seems to be able to wound him all the same. Because he really should have been there. Not for the first time, he wonders how many other things he should have been there for. He’d heard about Erik Selvig falling apart after being released from Loki’s control; could the same thing have happened to Clint? And if it did, would S.H.I.E.L.D. bother to try to help him?

“Pretty sure you’re doing the opposite of sleeping right now,” Tony says, sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Lot on my mind,” Phil murmurs.

Tony shifts.

“Listen, whatever it was they did to you, whatever they kept from you, we’re going to find out,” Tony says after a moment’s silence. “But that’s gonna have to wait until at least tomorrow morning because, like an idiot, you haven’t slept in three days. Not sleeping in three days can fuck with your head in the worst way imaginable. Believe me, I’ve been there. So seriously, go to sleep. Or else.”

“Stop threatening him,” Steve quietly chastises from the doorway.

“You would prefer it if I sang a lullaby?”

“I would prefer it if you stopped talking for five minutes,” Steve snorts.

“I was being reassuring,” Tony protests in a stage whisper.

They continue on like this for the next few minutes, but Phil isn’t about to stop them. Somehow their quiet bickering seems to do the trick, and as Steve protests that continuing to talk will not help in the slightest, he drifts off into his first sleep in days.


	2. With Halos at My Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just because you need sleep, doesn't mean it will come easy. Just because you need to pick yourself up from a fall, doesn't mean you can.

Steve stays awake. About three hours after Phil had first fallen asleep, Tony is out like a light on the bed beside the agent, his face mashed into a pillow and his arm thrown haphazardly over Phil’s middle. Steve’s a little grateful for the time to himself, finding he needs to mull over the past few hours.

The fact of the matter is, he doesn’t know Phil Coulson. Not at all. Nothing really beyond the five or ten minutes of conversation they’d had before he’d died—if it was even that much. He’s heard stories, of course. You hang around S.H.I.E.L.D. long enough and of course you’ll hear stories. Whispers, some truthful, some the stuff of myth, but all part of the legend.

He knows that Phil was highly regarded by his peers as well as the agents under his command. He knows that this man has a reputation of being strict, but fair. He knows this man is brave and can think on his feet. He knows this man values loyalty and trust. And he knows there is a lighter side to the agent, a jovial, prank-loving side, if you stick around long enough.

These are all things Steve’s learned second hand. He doesn’t actually _know_ this man.

But he doesn’t have to know him to be angry for him. When Tony had first called him up, rattled by whatever he’d seen, Steve’s first concern was making sure the genius was alright. He’d been through a lot since New York. What he hadn’t expected was Tony’s babbling, nearly incoherent insistence that Phil Coulson was alive.

He’d needed proof and Tony had supplied it. Reading over the mission write-ups, seeing Phil’s signature, hearing the affirmations from JARVIS, it had been enough to get his blood boiling. They’d been lied to. He’d been carrying around those bloody trading cards for a year and a half for a lie.

Before he could go storming out, Tony stopped him. Or perhaps it was more the look on Tony’s face that had stopped him. He’d looked… horrified, really. Pale, circles under his eyes and looking in desperate need of some sleep, Tony had sat him down and showed him the videos. And then he’d understood.

Watching Phil beg to be allowed to die, crying out until he was hoarse, was probably one of the most chilling things he’d ever seen. Strapped down to the table, eyes wide and mouth hanging open in a silent scream, he watched them continue to probe and manipulate the agent so far beyond the point that he should have been able to remain conscious that it made Steve’s stomach churn. He’d forced himself to watch to the end of the footage Tony had acquired. The videos were all essentially the same, with different time stamps and varying lengths, but they were all… very short. Almost as though they were previews. The idea that there were possibly more, longer cuts of what they’d seen had been enough to make him curse the fact that he couldn’t get drunk.

They’d talked for what felt like days, trying to decide who to bring in on this and what they were going to do about it. In the end they’d decided to keep an eye on S.H.I.E.L.D. communications to see what Phil was up to and to try to monitor him that way. Then Centipede had happened and here they are.

Phil stirs, but doesn’t wake, murmuring unintelligibly into his pillow. Steve rises from his seat and pulls the covers up further over the two sleeping men. He knows what it’s like to have your whole world ripped out from underneath you and while this may not be the same, he knows it’s going to hurt every bit as much. Trust is a valuable commodity in a place like S.H.I.E.L.D. and Steve knows that it’s not going to come easy to Phil now.  

The agent is murmuring again, louder now, as he frowns in his sleep and curls further in on himself. He’s gripping the bed sheets tightly, his breathing growing visibly labored. As Steve rises from his seat and moves closer, he can hear what the man is saying; words like “don’t” and “stop” and “please” come pouring out like water from a broken tap.

No, he doesn’t know Phil Coulson. But no one said you had to know to care and right now, more than anything, that’s what he needs. People who care. People he doesn’t have to be strong for—because Steve knows, just _knows_ , that he’s done enough of that.

“Agent Coulson,” he says quietly, resting a hand on the man’s shoulder. “It’s alright. You’re just having a nightmare.”

That doesn’t seem to help. If anything, it gets worse. Phil shakes and shivers, hard enough to wake Tony, who sits up and surveys the scene before him with bleary eyes, his gaze falling to Steve questioningly. Phil’s whimpering now, his breath catching between his pleas and although at first glance Steve had thought he was merely sweating, the soldier can see tears running down the agent’s face. Damn courtesy at this point.

“Phil,” he says, louder this time as he squeezes the agent’s shoulder.

“Please. Let me die, please, god just let me die,” Phil begs, his breathing quickly dissolving into hiccupping sobs. “Please, please, let me die. Let me die.”

“Come on, Phil,” Tony adds, leaning over him, his hand on the agent’s side. “Wake up.”

Steve feels a chill run up his spine when Phil’s only response is to cry out, his body jerking suddenly. He stops, drawing a handful of desperate, gasping breaths and cries out again, louder this time, as he flinches repeatedly.

“Nick, please!”

Steve clenches his jaw, anger burning hot like prodded coals in the pit of his stomach.

“Make it stop… just let me die, please. _Please_.”

“ _Phil_ ,” Steve nearly shouts, shaking the agent’s shoulder. “It’s alright, you’re safe. Just let it go. Stand down and let it go.”

It takes several more attempts to rouse the man before, at last, he comes to with a gasp and bolts upright. There’s about thirty seconds where Tony and Steve are attempting to ascertain if he’s really with them when Steve suddenly recognizes the look on Phil’s face. He quickly moves out of the way as Phil staggers out of bed and bolts towards the bathroom. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of retching reaches their ears, followed—minutes later—by the sound of the toilet flushing. When the agent doesn’t reappear, they decide to investigate.

When they reach the bathroom, the door is ajar and Phil is propped against the toilet, seated on the floor. They move to either side of him, crouching down to his level. His exhaustion is easy to read in his slumped shoulders and bowed head. Pale and covered in a thin layer of sweat, he shivers from his place upon the cold tiles, breathing heavily.

Wordlessly, Steve rises to move to the closet, easily locating a fresh flannel and bringing it to the sink to wet it. He fills a small bathroom cup while he’s there, diluting it with a little mouthwash for good measure. He sees Tony place a hand on the agent’s back, lower this time, away from where he would guess the scar might be.

“Think you got everything up?” Tony asks him as Steve approaches.

Phil nods slowly. Steve nudges his hand with the cup.

“Thought you might want to rinse your mouth out,” he explains.

Phil does just that before resting his head on the seat once again, still shaking as Steve presses the lukewarm cloth to the back of his neck. He’s sure he hears something that sounds like an apology and he’s about to offer a rebuttal, but Tony beats him to it.

“Don’t even start with that shit,” the genius says. “Do you know how many times I’ve had Pepper or Rhodey keeping my head out of the toilet bowl while I puked my guts out? You were even there for one or two of them. So cut the apologetic bullshit and just think of it as returning the favor.”

Phil nods at that, but Steve can’t help but feel it’s just an attempt to shut Tony up. His heart’s in the right place, but it’s clear they’re a little more emotional over this than they’d intended to be. They’d agreed to approach it with level heads, but after having seen just how tormented Phil is by all of this, it’s easier said than done. So he takes a deep breath and comes up with a different plan of action.

“Tony, can you check the kitchen and see if you can get something to settle his stomach? Crackers, ginger ale, ginger tea… something like that?” Steve asks.

Tony opens his mouth, looking full of piss and vinegar, but like Steve, he lets it all out in a slow sigh and puts it on the back burner.

“Right. Good. Can do,” Tony says, rising and walking out of the bathroom.

That done, Steve turns his attention back to the man before him.

“What do you say we get you back to bed?” he asks.

“Alright,” Phil answers, his voice hoarse.

He moves to rise on his own and manages to stand up straight, but Steve is quick to reach out and grab him beneath the arms when he totters unsteadily. There are a few tense moments when Steve’s half certain the agent is going to faint, but he manages to hold it together enough to raise a hand in to reassure the soldier that he’s alright—and to attempt to escape Steve’s hold on him.

“I’m fine,” he insists. “Stood up too quickly.”

Steve wants to argue, he really does. But he knows it’s better to let Phil walk back to his room under his own power. Something tells him that wounding the man’s pride any further isn’t going to help anyone. So he complies and follows Phil back to the bedroom, starting forward whenever he wavered, but finding he didn’t need to do much to help. Still, he feels better once Phil has settled back into bed.

“Feeling better?” Steve asks.

Phil offers him a small nod, rubbing his temples. Steve’s sure what he’s about to say will sound strange, but for the conversation they’re about to have, it’s necessary. He sits on the edge of the bed, clasping his hands in his lap and looking to the agent.

“I’d like it if you’d call me ‘Steve,’” he says. “So do you think I could call you ‘Phil’?”

“I think you already have,” Phil points out, propped up against the pillows.

Steve thinks back. Ah. That’s right. When he’d been having his nightmare.

“Fair enough,” Steve says with a slight shrug. “But I won’t again unless I have your permission.”

“Of course,” Phil says.

Steve nods his thanks before preparing himself for the conversation they’re about to have.

“I don’t know you. I think we can both agree on that,” Steve begins. “Apart from the things I’ve heard from other people, I don’t know you and I think that’s a damn shame. But the thing is, I know a particular kind of person why I see them. And you, Phil, are a particular kind of person.”

Phil is watching him with weary, wary eyes, looking like he desperately needs to sleep again and like he desperately does not want to.

“You don’t want help. Or… let me rephrase that, you want help, you need it, but you’re not used to relying on others this heavily and you can’t bear the idea of people seeing you at a low. Your team saw you at a low, and that hurts,” Steve says slowly. “I think some of it’s pride and some of it is just… you’re used to being the person that others rely on. You’re used to doing it alone.”

“Captain—“

“Steve.”

“Steve,” Phil sighs. “If this is some kind of pep talk…”

“Not exactly,” Steve answers with a small, sad smile. “Just hear me out. I promise there’s a point to all of this.”

Phil nods, a bit reluctantly, wincing at the motion. Steve holds a hand out, passing Phil two aspirin and watching as the agent swallows them dry before continuing.

“I never wanted to rely on people. But as much as I wanted to tough it out on my own, before the serum I had to rely on people. I’ll tell you right now that if it weren’t for Bucky, I probably wouldn’t have made it to adulthood,” Steve says with a shake of his head. “He was used to being the guy that people relied on. But after I went through with the super soldier program, after he was captured… that changed. After we got him and the others out of there, I noticed things about him. He tried to hide it, but these weren’t the kind of things you could just go on hiding. He’d been kept separately from the others and, to this day, I don’t know what they did to him. And I never will. But whatever it was, it changed him.”

Phil is watching him intently, silently waiting for whatever Steve is going to tell him.

“Whatever I found, I hid. We called it shellshock back then, but you’d call it PTSD today. Bucky and I were as stubborn as they came and as close as we were, he couldn’t stand the thought of having to rely on me like he did. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the insomnia… if they knew about it, they’d have labelled him a coward, a deserter, and he wasn’t. He was so far from those things,” Steve says insistently. He blows out a harsh breath, running a hand through his hair. “Looking at you now, I see him. You’ve been through something unimaginably terrible, something that pulls the rug out from underneath your feet, and coming to the realization that you don’t have the strength to pick yourself up is terrifying. It was for Bucky.

“What I’m getting at here as that this doesn’t make you as weak as you think it does and this doesn’t have to define you unless you let it. But I think you’re stronger than that. Yes, it’ll take time, and you need to _allow_ yourself time to deal with this. To cope with it. I know that you’re going to have trouble trusting people and asking you to trust us now is asking everything. Whether or not you decide you can or will trust us is up to you and we’re willing to respect that decision. You can ask us to leave at any time and we will. But what you have to understand…”

Steve stops himself. He knows he’s getting worked up again. Hearing the words he’s about to say in his own mind gets him angry all over again. But he can’t be angry here. There’s a time and a place for it and here and now are neither of those.

“What I’d like you to understand is that Tony and I are here because we want to be here. It’s not out of guilt or pity or feeling like we owe you one, regardless of what Tony said in the bathroom. We’re here because you deserve better than this. You deserve better than being left to deal with this _alone_ ,” Steve says insistently. “Because as much as you can’t stand to let others see you as anything but in control, being alone is just as bad. Especially when the people who you were supposed to be able to trust were the ones who put you here.”

He can see Phil’s resolve wavering, his insistence on keeping them out beginning to crumble, just a bit. Even _that_ is painful to watch because, really, he’s been damaged enough and Steve doesn’t want to contribute to that. But this is for the best. This is how to move forward.

“Thank you,” Phil says simply. “I’m… I appreciate what you’ve just said. And I’ll be keeping it in mind.”

Steve knows that’s all he’s going to get for now and he’s not interested in pushing for more. Phil needs to sleep, beyond desperately at this point, and keeping him awake any longer isn’t an option. So Steve reaches out and pats him on the leg.

“Think you can get back to sleep?” he asks.

“I can go back,” Phil murmurs, eyes already closed. “Not sure if I can stay there.”

“Well, try to sleep for now and we’ll take the rest as it comes,” Steve says, patting his hand as he rises. “I’m going to see what’s taking Tony so long.”

Phil hums something in recognition, but it appears he’s already beginning to drowse. Steve loiters, watching, waiting to see if he’s really asleep before leaving the room. It’s not much of a surprise that he’s fallen asleep so quickly regardless of his reluctance to do so; Steve can only imagine how exhausted he has to be by now.

He finds Tony in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil and fidgeting in place. The billionaire barely acknowledges his presence outside a brief nod of the head.

“How is he?” Tony asks after some time has passed.

“About as well as you’d expect,” Steve says with a sigh. He runs a hand over his eyes before reaching over to turn the knob on the stove off. “He’s asleep, so I think we can pass on this for now.”

“I’ll just… grab the ginger ale instead,” Tony says, hiking a thumb over his shoulder. He lingers at the refrigerator, staring into it even after he has the can of soda in hand, before slamming the door shut. “Fucking Fury.”

“Fucking Fury,” Steve agrees, shaking his head. “I just don’t understand the point of it. He was dead for _days_ , why put him through that? And I thought Barton said they were friends?”

“Some friend,” Tony scoffs. He drums his fingers against the can. “We need to dig deeper, we have to find out exactly what they did—“

“We talked about this,” Steve cuts him off. “On his word only. If we go digging around on our own and they find out about it, there’s no telling what will happen to him. Or his team. If we do this, we do it with his permission and keep him and Agent May in the loop.”

“Right. Agent May. When are we going to tell him about that, exactly?” Tony asks.

“She’s coming by in the morning,” Steve says. “We’ve already discussed it.”

“Something tells me he’s not going to like the fact that we’ve all been talking behind his back,” Tony says. “So, what do we do if he pushes all of us away because of it?”

“He won’t. But if he does…” Steve says, his sentence trailing off. He rubs the back of his neck. “We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t.”

“Yay, hope,” Tony drawls.

Steve doesn’t think Phil will push them away, but he can’t imagine the agent will be happy with this news either. He’s already having trust issues and if he sees this as another lie, it’s only going to make coping more difficult. Hopefully at the very least he’ll trust Agent May, trust her judgment, but there’s nothing they can do now other than wait to see how it all plays out.

“Let’s get back in there, see how he’s doing,” he says.

Tony makes a noise that might mean agreement as he walks past Steve, rolling the can of ginger ale between his hands. They find that Phil is asleep and thankfully it seems undisturbed—for the moment at least. Steve resumes his post in the armchair and watches Tony set the soda on the nightstand before crawling back onto the bed. They let the minutes tick silently by, eyes drawn to the sleeping man between them as though by force.

“Can’t say I ever thought it’d end up like this,” Tony says after a time. “Things seemed simpler a few years ago; I’d get in trouble, Fury would send him over to frown at me, we’d do the usual back-and-forth, he’d threaten to tase me and tell me not to do the thing, I’d do the thing after he left and he made sure to try and clean up my mess with… written affidavits and shit that I never used.”

“Sure. Simple,” Steve says.

“Simpler than this,” Tony says, his tone somber.

Steve frowns and rubs his hands on his own knees.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“You know him better than I do—“

“But not well.”

“Well enough.”

“…okay, well enough. What about it?”

“I think he can overcome this. I think he’s strong enough to do that. Something tells me he is,” Steve explains. “But I want to know if you think the same.”

Tony drums his fingers on his stomach, staring at the ceiling. He takes his time answering.

“I didn’t think something like this could happen to a guy like him in the first place.”

“But it has.”

“Yeah.”

“...”

“…”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you agree with me or not?”

“I want to,” Tony says, blowing out a harsh breath. He turns his head, studies Phil’s sleeping face before his gaze slides over to Steve. “If I had to put money on someone overcoming something like that, I’d put it on him. I mean… he’s alive. That’s something in itself. Granted, we still don’t know exactly how that happened, but considering we’re having this conversation right now, I’d say it’s a plus. A guy who stands up to gods and pushes me around and basically _lives this fucking job_ doesn’t just roll over and die because the odds seem impossible.”

“I’m not going to roll over and die.”

Tony and Steve freeze at the announcement.

“You’re awake,” Tony notes.

“You’re loud,” Phil mumbles, eyes still closed.

“I’m not _that_ loud,” Tony argues.

“You’re that loud.”

“I thought you were going to try to sleep,” Steve cuts in.

“I was trying,” Phil answers. “I woke up.”

“I’m sorry. We’ll keep it down,” Steve informs him. “But… exactly how much did you hear?”

Phil hesitates. “…enough.”

“Right,” Steve says.

“It can wait until morning,” Phil says, his voice heavy with sleep.

Neither of them argue with that, content to wait silently until the agent drifts off to sleep once more. It doesn’t take long. They don’t pick up their conversation again, both of them apparently feeling equally guilty for holding a discussion with Phil in the room and assuming he wouldn’t hear them. Instead, Steve waits it out until Tony manages to fall asleep again, too; one arm tucked under his pillow and the other thrown across his own stomach.

It’s seems strange to think it, but Tony needs sleep as much as Phil does. Much like when Steve had first met with Tony over this, the genius is strung out and tense. The situation has rattled him. He can claim he doesn’t know Phil, but Steve can see that they know each other enough for Phil’s plight to truly hurt Tony. And being experimented on against your will? It’s something Tony can relate to. Although he’d never come out and say it, this is scaring him. The line of respect between the two sleeping men he’s watching over is probably not always apparent, but it’s strong enough so that seeing Phil rendered so painfully human shakes something within Tony that he’s not keen on letting Steve see. He’d probably get shot for saying it, but there are a great deal of similarities between them.

It’s around four in the morning when Steve is forced to leave his seat.

Phil isn’t crying out as he had before, but it’s plain to see he’s in the middle of fighting off the memories plaguing his sleep. He shivers and twitches, moaning faintly. His breathing picks up, drawing to near-hyperventilation and enough to move Steve to action. So, he does what he’d always done with Bucky; gently easing himself onto the bed, he lays beside the agent and places them back-to-chest. He places a hand on the agent’s upper arm, squeezing reassuringly.

“Phil, you’re alright,” Steve says quietly. “You’re home, in bed, and no one here is going to hurt you. But I need you to come back for me. I need you to leave whatever you’re seeing and come back.”

Phil shakes against him, his whole body drawn taut like a bow. Steve is reluctant to risk touching his head, back or chest, just as he’s reluctant to attempt to draw him into an embrace; not for his own discomfort, but because he’s not sure those actions won’t make the situation worse. Where Phil is trapped in his nightmare, being held could very well translate to being strapped down to that operating table. Touch could act as a trigger instead of a balm. So he remains where he is, rubbing the agent’s arm slowly.

“You’re safe, what you’re seeing isn’t happening,” Steve says, his voice a low, smooth rumble. “It did happen, but it’s in the past. You’re going to need to face it, but now isn’t the time. You need to let it go and let yourself rest. Follow me back from it, alright? Listen to my voice and follow me back.”

He hears a sobbing gasp of air in response. He knows this is painful and knows there’s little he can do other than talk or shake the man awake. So he talks, and as he does, Phil’s shivering begins to calm down, his body begins to grow loose and his breathing begins to even out. The longer Steve talks, the more he does to convince the man that he is safe and protected where he is, the more Phil begins to relax. The process is gradual and not as quick as Steve would like, but he knows that these things take time, just as he knows it’s better to ease Phil into sounder sleep than it is to forcibly rip him from his nightmare by startling him awake.

At last, Phil seems to have reclaimed a dreamless sleep and Steve can breathe a little easier. He lies there and counts breaths, counts heartbeats, counts everything he can to reassure himself that, for the moment, the man’s suffering has come to an end. He closes his eyes and calculates—how many hours of continual sleep are needed, how many hours until Agent May arrives, how many things they need to discuss.

In the midst of this, he really doesn’t mean to fall asleep.

Doesn’t mean to, but does all the same.


	3. The Lying Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melinda, Steve and Tony sit Phil down for a talk. It goes about as well as any of them had expected.

It’s strange to wake and feel so exhausted, Phil thinks. Especially where, before all this, he’d been having days where he was almost manic. He’d wake in the mornings even earlier than he was used to and have frustrating levels of energy. Now, though… he feels like he could go back to sleep and never wake up.

It should be said that, as emotionally run-down as he is, he’s not immune to such things as embarrassment, which is precisely what he’s feeling at the moment. Tony has managed to slide down the bed enough so that his face is pressed to Phil’s stomach and one of his hands is fisted in Phil’s t-shirt. Steve is lying flush against his back, one arm looped across Phil’s hip and his face pressed to the back of Phil’s neck. Phil can feel him breathing; soft, even breaths that tickle his skin. He finds that one of his own hands had, at some point of the night, found its way to Tony’s hair—it’s shorter now, like Clint’s. Yes, he’s embarrassed, but not just because of the position they’re in. He feels embarrassment—and shame and frustration—for the fact that he actually feels _safe_.

For the first time in days, he feels safe. Not stable, no, but safe. It’s nothing against his team. He’d had the utmost confidence that they’d find him and they had, but he couldn’t allow himself to show weakness in front of them. Not any more than he had. That Skye had seen him like that… It makes him feel ill. The doubt in her eyes when he proclaimed himself to be fine, that it wasn’t real, that they were just messing with his head, he couldn’t bear it. The idea that his team might look upon him with doubtful eyes makes this situation all the more frightening for him. He’s supposed to be the stable one, the reliable one, the person that people come to when they need help.

Steve’s words ring in his ears, even as he thinks these things.

Still, when you’re sandwiched between Iron Man and Captain America while there’s a mysterious third person in the room, you don’t generally just go back to sleep without answers. Already knowing who he’ll find, he lifts his head slightly.

Melinda May is sitting patiently in the chair that Steve had—apparently—vacated in the middle of the night. They watch each other silently for a moment.

“Let’s be honest,” Phil says quietly. “This isn’t the strangest thing you’ve walked in on me doing.”

The attempt at lighthearted humor falls surprisingly flat, as much as he tries. It feels forced, too much like he’s trying to be himself when he’s… not.

“Go back to sleep, Phil,” she tells him.

The idea of doing anything else never even crosses his mind.

* * *

He’s alone when he wakes again. Based on the way the sun filters through the blinds, he guesses it must be sometime in the afternoon. He grimaces when he confirms by checking the clock on his nightstand and finds it’s nearly four o’clock. With a sigh, he settles back against the pillows and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. Minutes tick by and he doesn’t move. He can hear voices from down the hall and knows that at some point, he’s going to have to get out of bed.

At the very least, he supposes, he feels a little more human after getting some actual sleep. Cat naps between being ripped from sleep by nightmares hadn’t exactly been cutting it. He’d known that at some point his body would just give in to exhaustion, nightmares or no, but he had thought he could hold out a little longer. But maybe he shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Deciding that getting cleaned up is in order before he faces anyone, he rolls over and drags himself out of bed. By the time he’s standing under the hot spray of the shower, his recollection of waking the first time that morning filters back through his mind. The idea of looking any of them in the eye is wholly unappealing. How the hell had he fallen so far, so fast? When had he gotten this low?

Still pondering those questions, he washes up and gets out. Bracing his hands on the sink, he watches the perspiration drip down the mirror and wonders how long he can stall. Then he wonders when he became such a coward. Reaching up, he wipes away the fog on the mirror and looks in the eyes of the man that stares back at him. There’s an emptiness in those eyes that matches the hollow ache in his chest and it’s all so _wrong_. Eventually it gets to be too much, staring at the haggard man in the mirror, and he opts to brush his teeth, get dressed and face his guests. Ten minutes later, he emerges from the bathroom clad in an old pair of jeans and a sweater and tries not to be bothered by the fact that the conversations stops and all eyes are on him as he enters the kitchen.

“I see you’re going for the scruffy look,” is the first thing Tony says when he joins them.

Phil runs a hand across the stubble on his face, unwilling to admit that he hadn’t shaved because having a razor at his throat didn’t seem like a the best idea at the time.

“I hear it’s in these days,” he answers instead.

Melinda’s brought take-out, but the thought of food turns his stomach, so he settles for a cup of tea instead—he’d have gone for coffee, but the look she shot him told him he was better off not fighting it. Caffeine’s probably not the best thing for him at the moment, anyway. He doesn’t need any help staying awake.

“Eat something,” Melinda says, her words soft but unyielding.

Phil shakes his head. She gives him a look.

“Later,” he says, to placate her. “My stomach’s still a bit queasy.”

“You should probably eat _something_ , though,” Steve remarks. “Something plain. Toast?”

Phil leans against the counter, fingers wrapping around his mug. It’s too hot against his skin, but it doesn’t bother him as much as what he’s worked out.

“I’d prefer to talk about how long you three have been communicating behind my back,” he says.

His only answer is silence. When he turns his head to look at them, his gaze homes in on Melinda.

“Because you have been, haven’t you?”

“Phil,” Tony begins cautiously.

“Jesus Christ,” Phil breathes, setting his mug down.

“You need to sit down,” Melinda says, “and you need to listen.”

Phil bows his head, his grip on the counter tightening as though it’s the only thing holding him in place. He knows this isn’t their fault, that he shouldn’t be lashing out, but… well, it’s hard, isn’t it? It seems like every truth he’s ever known is being dashed against the rocks at every turn. How is he supposed to trust when they keep giving him reasons not to? But he’ll do this. He’ll sit and he’ll listen because there’s nothing else he can do. So, when he finally pries himself off the counter and walks towards the living room, he find himself praying to a god he hasn’t believed in since he lost his father that whatever they tell him will be the truth; and that he’ll be able to recognize it when he hears it.

He settles into his armchair and watches the other three take their places on the sofa—Steve at one end, Tony at the other and Melinda in the middle. This isn’t going to be a pleasant conversation, but it’s one that needs to happen. He just hopes he’ll be able to keep it together for it.

“So how long have you been in contact?” Phil asks.

“I contacted Stark a few weeks after you asked me to drive the Bus,” Melinda answers readily.

“Why?” Phil asks.

“Because you were different,” Melinda says.

“Which you assured me was normal,” Phil reminds her. “Death changes you. Your words, not mine.”

“I stand by that,” Melinda says. “And it did change you. It just wasn’t the only thing that did.”

Phil sighs. He’s not in the mood for any agent double-speak.

“Just… walk me through this,” he says.

“Something about you seemed off, so I did a little digging—with Sitwell’s help. Apparently he knew. Not much more than I did, but enough to get me started,” Melinda explains. “I don’t know exactly how they brought you back, Phil, but it wasn’t natural and it wasn’t right. They picked out the parts of you that they didn’t want and they wrote over them. I didn’t uncover much, but I found enough to make me sure that the Avengers needed to be included. You were told that they couldn’t know based on the fact that revealing the truth could potentially tear the team apart. You went along with it because you believed in the system, believed that there was a good reason behind the deception. Well, there was. You were being kept from them… but they were also being kept from you.”

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to say,” Phil admits.

“What she means is that you were being kept from us because they knew that allowing you to return to the company of people who knew you could only lead to all of us figuring out that something wasn’t right. And once we did that, it would only be a matter of time until we figured out what they’d done. And based on _that_ , they feared we would seek retribution—which is exactly what we would do,” Steve explains. He leans forward in his seat. “We were being kept from you for the same reason that the three of us—well, four of us, including Agent Sitwell—never approached you about any of this before now: because we couldn’t know how you would take it.”

Tony deciphers the confused look on Phil’s face before the agent can even find the words to ask what’s on his mind.

“There wasn’t a guarantee that it wouldn’t break you. Permanently,” he says. “They didn’t know, we didn’t know. As far as we know, we could be on some very thin ice here. They fucked around with your head so much, none of us could be sure that bringing any of this up wouldn’t just…”

He makes a sort of helpless gesture, shrugging his shoulders and gesturing to Phil. The agent gets the message loud and clear. If his brain were an egg, it had been stirred already and bringing any of this up could have potentially scrambled him. Eyes sliding shut, he massages his temples as he begins to feel another headache working its way forward.

“You keep saying ‘they,’” Phil points out. “Who are you referring to?”

“You’ve known Nick Fury for half your life,” Melinda says. “Did you really think he would do something like this of his own volition?”

“I don’t know,” Phil says frankly. “I didn’t think so, but then, remembering that the guy who’s supposed to be your oldest friend stood over you and watched you scream for death can plant a little bit of doubt in you.”

“It wasn’t on his orders,” Melinda says.

Clearly this is something she hadn’t discussed with Steve or Tony, as the two Avengers look to her with equally surprised expressions. It only serves to make him feel even more hopelessly frustrated over the situation. Where are the lies going to stop? When will there be an end to the deceit?

“He could have stopped it,” Phil grates. He grimaces, feeling a sharp spike of pain in his head. “I’ve been tortured before. Over the years, it’s happened on multiple occasions. It happens. It’s our line of work. But never— _never_ —did I break for any of it. None of the horrific things they did to me could do it. But S.H.I.E.L.D. did. The place that I trusted, that I fought for, the place I trusted to bring Clint and Natasha into, the place that I’ve now brought _Skye_ into, they were the only ones who managed to do it. And he let them. He stood by and he watched. He let me beg—he let me _beg_ , Melinda, to be put down. Like a dog. What was any of it for? I was dead. I was gone. I’m not…”

He cuts himself off with a noise of sheer frustration. His head’s beginning to throb.

“Fury went ahead with it, but it wasn’t his call,” Melinda says, while he’s given her an opening. “The order came down from the WSC.”

“But I’m not _worth that_ ,” he says, his voice raised. “It doesn’t make any sense. I’m just a level eight operative, no different than any of the others we have. I’m expendable. I’m replaceable. I don’t warrant that kind of attention.”

“Apparently they thought otherwise,” Melinda says.

This conversation is going nowhere.

“I think the point is… we don’t know why they did it or how, but they did,” Steve says. “And there’s no going back.”

“Not necessarily,” Phil mutters.

The words are out of his mouth before he really has time to think much about them and he instantly regrets it. Now he’s getting looks that wonder if he’s suicidal, that wonder if he’s a danger to himself, and although they’re valid questions, the fact that any of them are even thinking them sets him on edge. But can any of them say it’s a surprising thing to hear? You don’t scream for death just for the hell of it. He well and truly wanted to die. Having those memories returned to him, having the thing that had been put in place to ensure he’d have the will to live again revealed to be smoke and mirrors… he feels it again. That cloying emptiness inside him. It’s like a deep, yawning chasm in his chest that can’t be filled. A hopeless, helpless void of confusion and self-doubt and nothingness.

No, he doesn’t want to kill himself. But does he want to be alive? If he were to try to explain what he’s feeling to anyone, he doubts they would understand. He doesn’t really understand it himself. He has certain things that he wants to live for, certain people he wants to live for… but he’s not sure he’s happy to be alive. Maybe that’s just the echo of the screams from that pathetic, begging wretch ringing in his ears. Maybe they really are his own feelings. Regardless, he can’t expect any of them to understand it if he doesn’t understand it himself.

“That’s not what I meant. I have no intention of taking my own life,” he assures them. “I’m selfish, but I’m not quite that selfish.”

The other two seem hesitant to take his word, but Melinda has known him longer. Far longer. He may not be the same man he was before, but she knows enough of him to decipher the things he doesn’t say.

“That actually brings me to my next point,” Melinda says.

“Which is?” Phil fishes.

“Those memories may not be the only ones they took from you,” she tells him.

He feels a shiver travel down his spine. This. What he’s been afraid of all along, and here it is.

“What else did they take?” he asks hoarsely.

“We can’t know for certain,” Melinda says. “Until we understand exactly how you were brought back and what methods they used to alter your memories, discussing potentially missing memories could be… dangerous.”

“I’m sure you know how triggers work,” Tony adds on.

Phil nods slowly. He feels exhausted again—or maybe he just never stopped feeling it in the first place. Not only that, he feels lost. He’s used to knowing what to do and to being resilient enough to respond to even the most swiftly tilting scenarios, but here and now he feels as helpless as the young boy who had watched his father die in front of him.

“Then what’s the point of this conversation?” he wants to know. “If you can’t go into detail then why bring any of it up at all?”

“Because you need to know that you’re not alone in this,” Steve says resolutely. “Believe me, I understand what it’s like not knowing who to trust or where to turn to. Finding people who have your back isn’t just important; it’s vital. This is going to be hard—I’m sure you know that—but it doesn’t have to be impossible. The point of this conversation is to let you know that we’ve got your back, no matter how this plays out.”

“And if I decide I can’t trust you?” Phil asks.

“I’d hope it wouldn’t come to that, but like we said last night,” Steve answers him, “if you can’t trust us, then we’ll back off.”

Phil nods. He feels like he’s doing a lot of that lately; just silently nodding as he’s having the world turned upside-down on him. Just as he feels he’s saying “I don’t know” more than he ever has in his life. But the fact of the matter is, his life is filled with so many “I don’t know’s” because he really doesn’t know. The second he forms an opinion on something or makes a decision, he finds himself second guessing—himself, his colleagues, everything. It feels like that’s the real damage that’s been done here. Physically, he’s healed as well as could be expected, but he knows he’s a mental wreck. He used to be a man firm in his convictions and surefooted when it came to making decisions, and it feels like he’s lost that.

It’s dangerous. And it’s not him he’s worrying about.

“Melinda,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I’d like your professional opinion: am I a danger to our team?”

“If you were attempting to lead them in a mission right this very second, I’d say yes,” Melinda answers honestly. “But a few days from now? No.”

“And what makes you think I’ll be okay a few days from now?”

“You won’t be okay,” Melinda corrects him. “But you’ll have had the time you need to pull yourself back together enough to face them. I know you and I know you can do that. You’ve been through something that no one should have to go through and uncovering those memories, understanding the depth of the damage, it’s taking a toll. More than anything, you need to rest.”

“I’ve slept over twelve hours,” Phil points out.

“Believe me, you’re gonna want to sleep for a few days,” Tony informs him. “It sounds ridiculous, but stupid amounts of sleep is the best thing when you’re off-kilter.”

“And then after? Do we just pretend this never happened?” Phil asks.

“For security reasons, we’ll have to,” Steve says, running a hand through his hair. “But Tony, Agent May, Agent Sitwell and I are going to continue digging. Based on what Agent May has told us, it seems this all goes a lot deeper than we’d first thought.  So I think it’s important that we tread lightly and play it low-key.”

“We’ll be around, though,” Tony adds on. “You’ll be in the loop, just… y’know… secretly.”

“If they find anything and I think you need to know about it, then I’ll make sure you know about it,” Melinda interprets.

“And what about the others?” Phil asks. “Do we keep this quiet?”

“Last night you asked us not to tell anyone,” Steve reminds him. “In the end, that’s up to you to decide. I’d prefer to tell them because I think they have a right to know and that they’d want to know and I think you want them to know, but I know this will be easier to keep quiet if there are fewer people involved and that, if I were you, I probably wouldn’t want them to know just yet, either. Whatever you decide, we’ll go along with it.”

Phil drops his head into his hands, giving the matter some serious consideration. God, he wants to tell them. He wants them to know he’s alive. But he doesn’t want them to see him this way. Up until this point, he could at least hide behind the flimsy excuse that it had been Fury’s decision to keep him away. Now he’s the one accountable, the one who will be actively lying to them. His head hurts.

He thinks back on all the times they’d had his back, the times he’d had theirs… or he tries to. It’s like he’s farsighted all of a sudden; the memories seem sharper further away, but when he gets close they’re faded. Blurry. He concentrates, trying to bring them into focus, and it _hurts_. Until it doesn’t. Until the memory fades out into balmy sea breeze and sand and—no. No, no. He pushes past it, digs deeper, reaches further and by god it hurts like hell. It’s like his skull’s been ripped open again.

“Phil?” he hears Steve ask. “You alright?”

“I can’t… I can’t remember,” Phil hisses.

“What are you trying to remember?” Melinda asks.

“It’s like they’re not…”

It’s like they’re not there anymore. Just a vague outline. He’s got a vague impression of how certain people are important to him, but when he tries to examine anything closer, there’s nothing. There’s Tahiti. But no, that’s not quite right. They’re not erased, they’re still there, they still mean something to him. He just has to reach them. He has to try harder. So he pushes past Tahiti and tries again and that sharp, stabbing pain is making him shake but still he reaches further, pushes past it, keeps pulling towards something he knows has to be there and it hurts, and his ears are ringing and his head’s being split open and someone’s screaming but…

But he has to…

He has to…

And then it happens. He pushes too far. Something inside him breaks. He feels it, like a rubber band stretched so far that it snaps. Something breaks and it all goes dark and however hard he’d tried doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

* * *

Phil can hear voices. More than there were before. Right? Maybe. If he concentrates, he can just… no, no, that hurts. Concentrating hurts.

“Agent Coulson?”

He knows that voice. That voice had—

_This is **wrong**. Listen to him. Who ordered this? This is **wrong**! Listen to him!_

He lashes out, thrashes, trying to get away from… from… that voice and the things that go with it. But he’s being held down. Strapped down to a table? That’s where he is, right? Because that’s where that voice was. Where those horrible things were done. Stop. He has to make them _stop_.

“Phil, come on, Phil, listen to me. Calm down. You’re not in danger, no one’s trying to hurt you here. Stand down, now.”

The second voice gives him pause. Gives him time to remember. The reality of the situation trickles back to him slowly and he gradually becomes more aware of his surroundings. Eventually he pries his eyes open, though he almost wishes he hadn’t. He’s being held down by Steve and Melinda, with Tony hovering close by. And beyond him is… Dr. Streiten. He tenses, only to have their grip on him tighten.

“I called him here, Phil,” Melinda tells him. “Relax.”

“What happened?” he asks, his voice slurred with sleep.

“After claiming you were trying to remember something, and exhibiting signs of significant pain and distress, you lost consciousness,” Streiten recounts, stepping forward. “Agent May contacted me and requested my assistance when you began having a mild seizure.”

Phil gives himself a moment and takes several deep breaths to ground himself. Exhaustion lingers, draped over him like a shroud, but he supposes that’s not all that surprising. Seizures aren’t meant to be a walk in the park, be they mild or otherwise.

“Let go of me, please,” he says, as calmly as possible.

Thankfully, Steve and Melinda comply, apparently trusting him enough not to bolt or strangle anyone in the near vicinity. As they step back, he sits himself up, noting that he’s even sorer than he’d been before. His whole body feels like he’d taken a few turns on the rack, leaving him vaguely shaky even when he sits still. He tenses again as the doctor takes a step towards him, but the man holds up his hands peaceably.

“With your permission, I’d like to examine you,” Streiten says. “To ensure that everything’s in working order.”

Phil huffs a quick, bitter laugh. “I don’t need an examination to tell you that.”

“All the same,” Streiten says patiently.

To be honest, Phil isn’t in the mood to be poked and prodded, least of all by the man standing before him. But it wouldn’t be one of his brighter ideas if he told the doctor to get out, so he’ll just have to grin and bear it. And perhaps Streiten can at least shed some light on why this had happened.

“Alright,” he says.

He knows his posture is unnaturally rigid as the doctor begins his examination, but he can’t seem to force himself to relax.

“Can you tell me what you were trying to remember?” Streiten asks him, shining a penlight in his eyes.

“I was trying to remember details about my association with Agents Barton and Romanoff,” Phil recounts.

The light in his eyes is not coming from an overhead surgical light. It’s a penlight. He’s in his bed, not in an operating room. The people watching him are here to help him, not to hurt him. It’s embarrassing that he has to repeat these things to himself like a mantra, but it’s what’s keeping him grounded.

“Details,” Streiten echoes.

“I know that they’re important to me, but I don’t know why, exactly,” Phil confesses. He frowns. “It’s like… seeing a library full of books. You can read all the titles on their spines, so you know what they’re about, and maybe you know you’ve read them before, but when you pull any of them off the shelf and open them up, all the pages are blank. There’s no substance. There’s just…”

But he has to know. He knows it’s still in there, in him. The things he wants to remember, they’re still a part of him they’re just… buried under sand and sea and sun. He was close before, he knows it. He just has to dig a little deeper, hold out a little longer, be a little stronger. He can almost reach—

“ _Agent Coulson_.”

He snaps back to attention, out of wherever it was he’d been.

“You were drifting,” Streiten says, motioning to Tony for something.

Drifting. He was drifting. He’d been drifting before, that’s what they’d said. He remembers that. And they’d pulled him back. He didn’t want to come back.

“Phil. I need you to focus on what’s happening here, right now. _Do not_ try to think back.”

“Alright,” Phil says simply.

Blood. He tastes blood. Streiten presses a piece of wadded up gauze to his nose, pinches and asks him to tilt his head slightly forward. He does so without complaint, feeling lightheaded, his temples throbbing once again.

“What’s happening?” he hears Tony ask.

He hears Streiten sigh.

“I don’t know just how many memories were tampered with or in what ways,” the doctor proclaims. “The device that Centipede used on you managed to, for lack of a better term, unlock one of your memories of what S.H.I.E.L.D. had done to you. It’s my suspicion that, once your brain recognized that it had been tricked, it began looking for other mental blocks, other… empty books. And whenever you tried to recover the missing information—“

“Tahiti,” Phil mumbles.

“Yes, your mind redirects you towards that false memory. It was planted to save you from experiencing pain, therefore when you begin to experience pain in trying to override those mental blocks, it redirects you as per your… programming,” Streiten says, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. “However, your mind still recognizes the gaps and is still attempting to recover information. Add to this the fact that you seem to be manually trying to force your way through and you’ve got a rather circular problem.”

“And what do you suggest I do about it?” Phil asks, head still bowed.

“I suggest you rest. Sleep as much as you think you can or need to,” Streiten says. “And, as difficult as it is to suggest, you need to stop trying to remember things.”

“I can’t just stop,” Phil says resolutely. “They’re my memories.”

“I didn’t say to stop looking for the truth,” Streiten corrects him. “You should continue looking. Because you’re owed the truth, at the very least. What I am asking as that you do not attempt to actively seek out those memories which you’ve lost. Your brain is going to be doing enough inactive searching on its own and the added stress you would be piling on top of that results in more of this. Blackouts, seizures, potential hemorrhaging… you could end up doing permanent damage. Continue to seek the truth, but do so from the outside. I think you’ve been through quite enough in the past few days, so it’s time to give yourself a chance to recover.”

“That’s a tall order,” Phil says with a weary sigh.

“Understandably,” Streiten answers. Phil feels a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry, truly, for the part I’ve played in this.”

Phil isn’t quite sure how to respond to that. From their least meeting to now, he can see that the man is weighed down heavily by guilt and remorse, but there’s that nagging sense of doubt along with that nasty little voice in the back of his head that says _“you **should** be sorry.”_ That’s not him, though. That’s not who he is. He’s a man of trust and forgiveness, and he finds himself fearful of lending out either of those things.

“I hope you’ll understand,” he says instead, “that I’d like very much to forgive you, but that I’m not sure I’m capable just yet.”

“I don’t expect forgiveness,” Streiten replies. “Nor am I asking for it.”

He pulls the gauze away and instructs Phil to lift his head. A quick examination ensures that the bleeding has stopped and that he seems to be in no danger of any further seizing. After some careful instructions to take it easy, Steve and Melinda see the doctor out, leaving Tony and Phil alone. Phil sits propped up against the headboard, his knees drawn up and his eyes shut as he continues to try to process Streiten’s advice.

Just don’t try to remember things. Should be simple enough.

He’s frustrated, he’s exhausted, he’s frustrated that he’s exhausted and he’s sore as hell. There’s a point where you have to wonder what you’re even doing here, and he’s pretty sure he reached it yesterday. He’s on that razor’s edge where grief and anger and fear turn to apathy, just because it’s easier to deal with. It hurts less if you don’t care.

It’s just that everything’s so… convoluted. There’s too much to process at once. He needs to clear the air, clear his head. So he makes up his mind.

“I’m going for a walk.”


	4. It's the Angels Up Above Me, It's the Song That They Don't Sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the last things Phil had ever expected was to relate to Steve on this level.

“Uh, no,” Tony says, rising even quicker than Phil does. “No, no. You just had a seizure, you shouldn’t even be walking to the bathroom right now.”

“Mr. Stark, I appreciate the concern, but I need to get out and clear my head a little,” Phil says, stepping around him.

“Guys, he’s trying to escape!” Tony shouts.

Phil wonders what he did to deserve Tony Stark. Not a moment later, Steve and Melinda come hurrying back, effectively blocking his exit. Yes, he sees where Tony’s coming from, but if he stays in this apartment one more second with all of them hovering over him, he’s going to lose it.

“I’m just going for a walk,” he informs them.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Steve says, frowning.

“I tried to tell him,” Tony says.

“If you’re going anywhere, it’s not going to be alone,” Melinda says.

The other two shoot her looks, apparently not appreciating the fact that she’s not on their side. At the very least, Phil can be thankful that she’s a little more understanding of what he’s trying to do, but it’s clear he’s not going to completely get his way with this.

“I just need some space,” Phil says, to all of them but to Melinda specifically. “It’s too much and I need to get some air so I can begin sorting this out.”

“I understand that, but you can’t go alone,” Melinda says, making it clear that this is an argument he won’t win. “Given the fact that you collapsed and lapsed into a seizure for trying to remember something, I can’t allow you to leave unsupervised.”

Phil nods, pinching at the bridge of his nose. It’s Melinda’s way or not at all, so as much as he hates having to agree to a chaperone, he knows he’s not leaving this apartment without one. “Just one of you, then.”

“I’ll get my coat,” Steve says immediately.

“Wait, why do you get to go?” Tony wants to know, following him to the living room.

“Because if he blacks out again or has another seizure, I can carry him more easily than you can,” Steve counters.

“Okay, fine, but if I suit up I could fly him back here—“

Phil stops paying attention, letting their voices dwindle out as they get further away. He shifts his gaze from the floor to Melinda’s face. In many ways, he understands now, how she had felt after Bahrain. When he had tried so hard to get her to open up to him. When he had tried so hard to help her pick up the pieces. Now here she is trying to do the same thing for him and he’s beginning to understand why she hadn’t let him in all those years ago. Something occurs to him then, and he can’t help but voice his fears.

“Did I forget you, too?” he asks her.

“No,” she responds. “You still have me.”

The declaration relaxes him, soothes some of the worry away. He hates this, the uncertainty at every turn. If the fallout of what’s been done to him is the knife in his back, then having to see the look in her eyes has got to be twisting it.

“Take your time, clear your head,” Melinda says slowly. “But let Rogers know if you’re feeling… off.”

Phil offers her a tight-lipped smile and a nod as he sits down on the edge of his bed to lace up his shoes. He wonders what she sees when she looks at him now, if she sees something less than what she used to. It’s that thought which burns a hole in him, which pushes the knife deeper. Knowing you’re something less than what you used to be and railing against that fact do you no favors.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” Steve says from the doorway.

“Ready,” Phil answers, pulling his coat from the closet.

He doesn’t bother to wait up, not caring to see the understanding look the three of them share as he exits through the front door. Typically, he wouldn’t dream of making Steve hurry to catch up to him, but this isn’t typical. He’s already started walking down the sidewalk by the time Steve joins him, jogging up and hanging back just behind his left shoulder.

“Anywhere you’re going in particular?” the soldier asks.

Phil shakes his head. Steve seems to get the message.

“Alright,” he says. “Listen, I know this isn’t how you’d like to do this. I’m sure having a babysitter is the last thing that you want right now, so I’ll be shadowing you but I promise you won’t even know that I’m here.”

“Thank you,” Phil says simply.

He really does mean it, though he’s sure it must not sound it. Thank god the other man seems to understand what he needs right now without Phil having to say it. They walk on like this for tens of minutes, for a length of time that he’s not certain of, and while the idea of Steve shadowing had sounded appealing at its suggestion, he finds he’s not in favor of its practice.

It’s not Steve’s fault. The man is as good as his word and, were it not for the fact that Phil knows he’s there, he would be very difficult to detect. But therein lies the problem; Phil knows he’s there. At any other time, he could tune that sort of thing out and make himself feel as alone as he wanted to be, but right now… Knowing that there’s someone behind him, no matter the distance, unsettles him. He could turn around at any moment and reassure himself of Steve’s exact location, but that would hardly do him any good. It’s not the fact that it’s Steve behind him, just the fact that _someone_ is behind him. Someone is at his back. He feels exposed and unprotected, angry at the way this makes his limbs shake and his palms sweat.

At last, he can’t take any more of it and comes to a dead stop. His pulse is pounding in his ears and his breathing rate elevated.

“Steve,” he calls, hating the weakness in his voice.

The soldier is by his side in a flash, hovering once again by his left shoulder.

“Not feeling well?” he prods.

“No, not that, just…” Phil says. He pauses, wets his lips and stares at his shoes. “I know I’m the one who asked, but do you think you could… maybe not shadow me?”

Steve frowns. “I can’t let you go off alone.”

“I know that. I meant it more like you walking beside me instead,” Phil elaborates. His hands clench into fists in his pockets. “When I know there’s someone behind me I just feel…”

He can’t force himself to say it. _I feel scared._ Of every human emotion, fear is the one he’d sooner go to his grave than cop to feeling at a time like this. Steve’s intuition is uncanny, however, and he immediately moves away from Phil’s left shoulder, rounding him until he’s standing beside the agent on the right.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

Phil shakes his head, pressing his palm to his forehead and closing his eyes. “It’s not your fault. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t seem to make myself _not_ feel that way.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Steve says firmly.

The worst part is that Phil believes him. He says it in such a way that Phil can’t possibly doubt him, regardless of how he himself feels about it.

“Want to keep going?” Steve asks him.

“Please,” Phil answers, breathing deeply as he returns his hand to his pocket and opens his eyes. They walk for only a minute before he finds himself asking, “Why are you doing this?”

The question catches Steve by surprise. “Because I want to.”

“You don’t know me.”

“No, I don’t. I’d like to change that, though.”

“Is it guilt? Because I know how Fury spun it and I’ve seen the way Stark looks at me. I’m the one who decided to do it, so it’s not on any of your heads.”

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that people care about you?” Steve asks quietly.

“Because I’m just…” Phil says, his sentence dwindling off lamely. He frowns. “I don’t remember. The people who are supposed to be important to me, the people I’m supposed to be important to… I don’t remember. I’m still not entirely sure that isn’t all just made up.”

“It’s not made up,” Steve assures him. “There _are_ people who care about you, who miss you. I know quite a few people who would do anything to get you back. And if I don’t owe it to you, then I at least owe it to them. I’m doing this because what happened to you and what’s continuing to happen to you isn’t right. And if I’m being honest, I feel like I can relate to you a little on this.”

Phil glances at him but keeps his mouth shut, giving the other man the floor. Steve shrugs, offering him a lopsided smile.

“I know what it’s like to wake up and have your whole world pulled out from underneath you,” he says. “And… I know what it’s like to be lied to by S.H.I.E.L.D., too. I mean, that room they set up for me after they thawed me out alone…”

Steve’s surprised when Phil groans loudly. “I told them not to. I told them it was a bad idea, but they went ahead with it anyway. I mean, playing a game that you already knew to have happened? Really?”

Steve raises his eyebrows at the outburst. “So you knew?”

Phil opens his mouth and shuts it quickly, flushing just slightly.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Yes, I knew. I was on the team that originally recovered you. For whatever reason, S.H.I.E.L.D. elected to ignore my input on the matter.”

Steve hums thoughtfully. “On the Quinjet. You said you watched me while I was sleeping. So you mean you sat with me in that room?”

“When I was able,” Phil says slowly.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t think you should be alone,” Phil answers, feeling about as embarrassed as he had that day on the Quinjet. “You had caretakers, but no one really waiting for you to wake up who had any interest beyond S.H.I.E.L.D. mandate or scientific research. It just didn’t seem right. You weren’t in a coma, exactly, but I’ve heard that coma patients can sometimes sense that people are with them, so I thought it was worth a shot. I thought it might help. Just a little, anyway.”

“But you didn’t know me.”

“No, but—“

Phil stops himself short, the conversation finally clicking into place inside his head. Steve had been leading him on, waiting to get this exact response out of him. And damn him, it had actually worked.

“See?” the soldier says. “You had your reasons. I have mine.”

“I want you to know,” Phil says as they round a corner, “that if I was entirely myself right now, I wouldn’t have walked into that.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Steve says with a small smile. “But do you understand?”

“I do,” Phil says. “Which is why I hope you won’t think too badly of me if it takes me some time to come around to believing it.”

“I won’t think badly of you,” Steve promises him. The captain looks thoughtful for a moment before he presses on. “And I hope you won’t think too badly of me for our sleeping arrangements last night.”

Phil waves a hand dismissively. “I’m used to close quarters. Some missions you don’t have the luxury of sleeping alone. Or a bed, even. I’d imagine the same can be said for your time in the military.”

“When you could sleep, you slept. That’s just how it worked,” Steve says with a shrug. “All the same, I hope I didn’t do anything to make you uncomfortable.”

Steve eyes flicker to his left shoulder and Phil understands what he’s implying. Steve had been lying behind him and the soldier is wondering if that may have unsettled him in any way like their walk had. Phil’s too embarrassed to tell him that it was the exact opposite, that being sandwiched between him and Tony had afforded him the best sleep in recent memory.

“No, you didn’t,” Phil says, clearing his throat. “Likewise, I apologize if I was something of a hassle.”

“You _have_ to stop thinking of this as an inconvenience to us,” Steve says, shaking his head.

“But it is,” Phil argues. “The longer I stay this way, the more I inconvenience people, the more I put people in danger. I need to find a way to just… make it all stop.”

Steve chews on that for a time.

“I hope that when you say you want to make it all stop,” he begins, choosing his words carefully, “that you’re not including the possibility of stopping yourself to accomplish that.”

The words should make Phil feel guilty. They should make him feel _something_. But as it stands, there’s just a fuzzy numbness that edges that empty pit inside him. There really isn’t any good way to explain to your childhood hero that you have a hard time walking by bridges these days without fantasizing about jumping off them. Or that the deterring thought that prevents you from driving through a guardrail is that it would be a sin to so much as scratch a classic like Lola. Or that you wonder if they’d be able to piece you back together again if this time you blew your brains out instead. There’s no easy way to say these things. There’s no easy way to say that, really, you think everyone would be better off if you just... stopped.

“It’s hard sometimes, not to wish for it,” Steve says. At Phil’s head whipping up, he offers smile that lacks in any true humor or joy. “You seem surprised to hear me say that.”

“It’s just that you’re so…” Phil says. “Well. You.”

“Yeah. Well, these days people seem more comfortable discussing those things,” Steve says. “Depression. Anxiety. Suicide. How it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re not immune to them.”

Phil _does_ feel guilty at that. It’s not that he doesn’t see Steve as a person, but perhaps the shine hasn’t worn off him just yet. It’s hard to shake a lifetime of viewing the man beside him as an infallible symbol of good. But he knows Steve’s every bit as human as he is, every bit as susceptible to the trials of humanity as he is.

“I’m sorry, that was incredibly dense of me,” Phil admits.

“It’s alright,” Steve says, easily enough. “I understand.”

And he really does, from what the agent can tell. He feels a strange connection to this man, one that has nothing to do with heroes and idolism, but has everything to do with the mantle of leadership and being so painfully human. Steve Rogers is not infallible. He is a shining example of humanity—which Phil doesn’t think he will ever change his mind about—but he is flawed and damaged. He is these things in many of the same ways that Phil is.

“I don’t want to die,” Phil clarifies. “Not again, anyway. Not for a while.”

“I don’t want to die either,” Steve tells him. He shrugs his shoulders. “But sometimes… you just want it to stop.”

“Yes,” Phil agrees, trying to swallow around the traitorous lump that’s worked its way up his throat.

“It may be the last thing you want to hear right now, but it’ll get better over time,” Steve says. “I don’t think it ever really gets to be all better, but your good days outweigh your bad ones. Sometimes you get low and you have a bad day and you think about it. How easy it’d be to… I dunno, jump in front of a bus or something. But you know you don’t _really_ want that. What you want is just an end to it, to feeling like that’s your only chance at escape. Because you’re so tired that you’re not sure you’ve got anything left in you to keep going.”

“And you found a way to keep going,” Phil says.

“I’ve found reasons,” Steve says with a nod. “People, mostly. People that need me around, that make me want to be around. I think you’ve got people like that, too.”

Phil manages a nod. He has his team. He wants to be around to watch Skye and Jemma and Leo grow as agents, to live up to the potential he’s seen in them and become the heroes of the stories that circle the academy. He wants to be around to see Grant come out of his shell, to continue to develop as a team player and not the lonesome wolf they’d brought him in as. He wants Melinda… he wants her back. Selfishly, he wants to find that she is still capable of being the woman he remembers. They’ve started down that road, but how unfair is it that he should ask that of her when he now struggles so deeply with the same issue within himself?

Beyond his team, he apparently has others. People like Clint and Natasha who are owed this, owed his survival, owed the effort. There are people like Tony and Steve who are apparently willing to put in the effort where picking up the pieces are concerned. People like Jasper who work silently to uncover the truth.

“I do,” Phil says in agreement. “And I think that, given time, that may be enough.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Steve is quick to say. “You have to do this for you. If you do it solely for them, eventually it’s _not_ going to be enough. You have to really want it. The will to keep going has to come from you, not from others.”

Phil knows that well enough. Doing things for the sake of others is familiar to him. The drive to meet that goal has always been enough to keep him on his feet and pushing forward. Suddenly it isn’t. He knows very well what Steve is attempting impart upon him because he’s standing at the center of the very crossroads the soldier has just described. What he needs to decide is not how much he values others, but how much he values himself.

“Thank you,” Phil says, after minutes of silence. “This has been… enlightening.”

“I just wish I could do more than run my mouth,” Steve tells him, reaching up to rub the back of his own neck.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Phil assures him. “You all have. It’s more than I’d ever expected.”

“It’s what you deserve,” Steve reminds him. He lays a hand on the agent’s shoulder, squeezing once before retracting. “Whatever the truth of all this is, we’ll get to the bottom of it. I can promise that much.”

Phil’s not sure what the whole truth of the matter will bring. He doesn’t know if those empty pages will ever be filled or if he’s too far gone to return to the man he once was. But at the very least, he’ll have allies. He’ll have support. If only he can learn to allow them to do just that.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to head back,” Phil says. “I hate to admit that Stark was right, but maybe I was a little too adventurous thinking a walk following a seizure was a good idea.”

“Let’s head back, then,” Steve agrees readily. “Do you need to sit first?”

“No, no, I can manage,” Phil says.

“I could always carry you, if it comes to that,” Steve adds.

That works an embarrassed laugh out of Phil. “I’m still hoping that I’ll escape from this situation with at least a shred of my dignity intact.”

* * *

 

“What the fuck happened?” Tony demands as Steve marches in the front door.

“He’s alright,” the soldier is quick to assure them.

As Melinda takes in the sight of Steve carrying in a clearly unconscious Phil on his back, she’s not quite as sure. It’s not that she thinks Steve would willfully fluff over anything wrong with Phil, but rather that given the situation, she’s more than a little cautious about the state of his health.

“He just overdid it a little,” Steve says, leading the way to the agent’s bedroom.

“I’ll say,” Tony snorts. “You were gone over two hours.”

“He needed it,” Steve says.

“How bad is he?” Melinda asks, helping the soldier gently lower Phil to his bed.

He doesn’t stir, his body loose and pliant even as she begins removing his coat and shoes. Steve looks to be deciding just what he thinks is appropriate to impart upon them and that alone tells her all she needs to know. It’s bad. It’s very bad. Phil has always been steady and predictable in his nature, but with this she finds herself at a loss as to what he might truly be feeling. Because he’s certainly not telling her. She makes a quick check of his pulse to assure herself that Steve is right and there’s nothing wrong with him beyond exhaustion. She doesn’t especially feel like having to call Streiten back; Phil may be big on second chances, but watching him withdraw from Streiten’s presence—seeing him scared and then angered by the doctor simply being there—meant she wasn’t in any great hurry to put the two of them in a room together again.

Her fingertips brush lightly against the bruises on his face, which are in the first stages of healing. Seeing him as she has these past few days hurts her in a way she was certain she was incapable of since Bahrain. Part of her hates him for that, for bringing her into this team and making her _care_ again. It’s easier when you don’t care. It’s so much easier.

“I won’t lie; he’s in a bad place,” Steve says with a sigh, folding his arms over his chest. “Right now he’s about as low as you can get. But having said that, I think he still has the capacity to overcome it. Eventually.”

“Still think he’ll be ready to go in a few days?” Tony asks her, his tone flat and skeptical.

“Yes,” Melinda says resolutely.

“She’s right,” Steve says. “He’s not going to be okay, but being with his team will help.”

“I just…” Tony says, throwing his hands up and letting out a groan of frustration. “I mean, can’t we _do_ something here?”

“That’s not how it works. You know that just as well as I do,” Steve says.

Tony opens his mouth to say something, seemingly thinks better of it and snaps it shut, folding his arms moodily over his chest. Although she would never say it, Melinda understands how the genius feels. It’s not easy watching someone tear themselves down and being unable to do a damn thing about it. The nature of being human is that they are breakable, but nearly anyone who knows him would tell you that there has always been something distinctly unbreakable about Phil Coulson. Which is why this is so difficult.

“I still think we should go straight to Fury,” Tony mutters. “We’re not helping him by saying, sorry, we’ll get back to you on that whole missing memories, torture and forced resurrection thing. You just hang in there, buddy.”

“And if we act rashly this could end very badly. For everyone,” Steve says. “Agent May already explained why she thinks this is bigger than Fury. We have to be careful. You’ve got people like Agent Sitwell who are working on this from the inside and there’s no telling what will happen if they find out he’s been looking into this. And this team? Agent May, what would you say they’d be willing to risk if it meant helping him?”

“The same that he’d risk for any one of them,” Melinda says without hesitation. “Everything.”

“Exactly my point,” Steve says, shaking his head. “We’re walking on very thin ice, so if we make a move too quickly or we bring our foot down too hard… we’re risking taking them all down with us. I’m not about to do more harm than good here. I think enough harm has been done already. This is going to be hard on him and I hate that it has to be, but we _have_ to do it this way.”

“And do you really think he can do that?” Tony retorts. “Do you really think it’s fair to keep him hanging on? You saw the tapes, Steve. You both did. And now all of that just came back to him. The thing that was supposed to keep him stable, keep him wanting to live? Gone. It’s gone. I think asking him to keep calm and carry fucking on is more dangerous than you think. You’re right, enough harm has been done, but we’re doing more by letting him go on like this.”

“He can take it,” Melinda says.

“I’m not asking you if he _can_ take it. I know he can take it,” Tony says, his tone biting. “I’m asking _why_ you think he should have to.”

“Because I can’t endanger my team.”

The three of them collectively turn to look at Phil, who is propped up on the bed and watching them with tired eyes. Tony scrubs his hands across his face.

“Okay, you know what? From now on, if you’re asleep and you wake up and any of us are in the room, you have to say ‘I’m awake now’ because it’s creepy when you just drop in on a conversation like that,” Tony declares.

“To be fair, I think I’m only half-awake,” Phil mumbles.

“Then say you’re half-awake. Anything on the spectrum of consciousness that isn’t unconscious? Announce it,” Tony replies.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Phil says. He closes his eyes. “In the meantime… as much as I would prefer to go with your plan of action, there’s too much at stake.”

“But the sooner we can get to the bottom of this—“

“Please,” Phil cuts him off.

Tony wavers uncertainly. “But it’s not right. It’s not fair.”

“Things rarely are,” Phil points out. He sits up slightly. “Believe me, I want to know. I want a way to fix this. But these aren’t things that can be fixed so readily, so the best I can do right now is just… hold on and try to trust the people around me. Or relearn to trust them. Trying to make a move on this without fully understanding who was behind it or why it was done can’t end well.”

Tony appears subdued by the words, watching Phil with a vacant, mournful expression. Steve chooses that moment to make an announcement that takes all of them by surprise.

“I guess now’s a good a time as any,” he says. “I’ll be joining S.H.I.E.L.D. as an agent.”

“What?” Phil blurts.

“Technically, I was always with S.H.I.E.L.D., but now it’ll be official,” Steve elaborates. “I’m not sure what good I can do, if I might be able to help Agent Sitwell out or do anything on my own, but if something’s gone wrong and S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t the organization it’s supposed to be anymore, then we need to fix it. I don’t think having another man on the inside could hurt, either.”

“No, it couldn’t,” Melinda agrees, nodding her approval.

“For the time being, I’m not sure you should,” Phil warns him.

“There are risks,” Steve acknowledges. “I’m willing to take them. Besides, if worst comes to worst, you’re not the only agent I’ve got a stake in looking out for.”

That quiets Phil immediately, as Steve had known it would. There are people like Clint and Natasha, people like Jasper and even Phil’s own team that he has to consider. The more of them there are to band together, the better their odds.

“That being said,” Steve says, ducking his head, “once I join up, I won’t be able to contact you any further.”

“Too suspicious,” Phil agrees. “And they’re bound to be watching you closer than any other agent.”

“We’re going to have to pretend none of this ever happened,” Melinda says.

“Which, as you probably guessed, I’m not really okay with,” Tony says. “So I’ve got a little burner phone that I whipped up for you. The calls only operate between that phone and the one I’ve designed for myself, so S.H.I.E.L.D. shouldn’t have any idea that you’ve contacted me if you use it. If the shit really hits the fan, use it and I’ll have Spangles give the call to Assemble in no time flat.”

“Thank you,” Phil says. “All of you.”

“You can thank us once we’ve actually fixed this,” Tony says.

“I’ll be sure to.”

“In the meantime, let’s look into getting something to eat,” Steve says. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday and I think the rest of us could do with a bite, too.”

“Says the guy with a metabolism that operates at four times the human norm,” Tony snorts. “I’ve seen the way you eat; you’re going to have more than just a bite.”

They’re all surprised to see Steve blush before muttering, “Shut up, Tony.”

“Come on,” the genius says, slapping him on the arm and leading him from the room, “let’s see which places will deliver enough food to feed a horse.”

Melinda watches them go before looking to Phil. He stares at the empty doorway, lost in thought. He does that a lot since he’d come back. She doesn’t need to ask to know what he’s thinking about or where his mind’s taking him. She places a hand on his shoulder, not missing the way he flinches, the way he remains tense under her palm.

“Let it go,” she says. “Just for now.”

He sighs deeply, eyes falling shut as he tries to center himself. “Okay.”

She can’t tell if he really does, but as the four of them eat and he smiles a little more and contributes to the conversation, at the very least he does a very good job of faking it.

* * *

The bruises are nearly gone by the time Phil returns to the Bus, the cuts fully healed. Clean-shaven and in one of his usual too-neat suits, he certainly doesn’t look as though he’d been through hell and back. But she sees it in the way he withdraws from the team, the way he locks himself in his office and doesn’t join them for meals or game nights as he had before. It’s not healthy. The team feels it, senses that withdrawal and hums with silent, worried energy.

There’s a very long road ahead of them, she thinks to herself as she watches Phil flip through his binder for the hundredth time, but they’ve taken the first, crucial steps down that path. And as much as he feels it right now, he’s not a hopeless case.

Melinda doesn’t know what the future holds or how all of this will play out, but he’ll always have them in his corner. She can’t promise that he’ll ever be truly whole again, but she can promise that he won’t have to face it alone. When the time for truth and reconciliation comes, they’ll all be there with him.

No matter the cost.

No matter the outcome.

Because they are Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Because they are a team.

Because they are a family.

And that’s something no truth can change.


End file.
